


The world didn't end

by cornflake_girl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s08e13 Per Manum, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Rating May Change, and then miracle happened, and what happened when the lights went out, pre-pregnancy arc, season 7, that one lonely night when she invited Mulder to her bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-05 17:36:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12194556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cornflake_girl/pseuds/cornflake_girl
Summary: Crossing a boundary doesn't necessarily mean that you did something you shouldn’t – it can also mean that you did something you really wanted to but you just needed a little push to dare. And even if that push came from a dark, lonely place it can still bring you peace and happiness…One of many scenarios of might have happened when Scully learned that in vitro procedure didn’t work out.





	1. boundary

_[i: boundary]_

He holds her tightly in his embrace. She feels the strength of his arms, she feels how warm his body is against her. And even though countless times before she had found comfort and safety in those arms, this time it’s not enough. She still sees her doctor’s face, right in front of her, filled with sympathy and traces of remorse, telling her that the procedure did not work. Each one of his words crushed her hopes and dreams until there was nothing left other than a piteous pile of splinters, fragments of shattered glass that you can no longer fixed, that you can only hurt yourself with. She grasps desperately for the only constant that is near – the arms of her friend – yet she is unable to find any consolation there. She cannot hold back sobs that run through her body and make her shiver.

“Hey,” he speaks quietly, almost whispering, pulling her away a little to see her face. One of his hands goes to her waist, the other one caresses her face trying to wipe off the tears. Looking her in the eye, he repeats with soothing and calm voice, “It’s OK. Calm down. Shhh. It will be alright…”

Though they’re coming from the depth of his heart, those meaningless words of consolation do not bring any relief. That’s why she closes her eyes and focuses on his hand that goes from her cheek to her hair, stroking it slowly. In that gentle, loving caress she finds more comfort than in all the words that almost involuntarily fall from his lips.

She tries to calm her breathing. All her thoughts are focused on him. He’s here for her. He’s here in this darkest hour when she needs him the most. He holds her tightly, never letting her fall down. He’s here because she lost her last chance to fulfill her biggest dream. But if it had worked – and she knows that for sure – he would also be here, also holding her in his arms, sharing with her joy instead of sadness. He had been waiting here for her, because he’s her friend, because he wanted to share those moments with her, regardless of what they will bring. But – and she asks herself this question for the first time – had he also been waiting thinking about his own future? If the procedure turned out to be a successful one, she would have been carrying his child now. Not only she would become a mother – Mulder would become a father. That would have been their child, binding a part of her and him in itself. It would have tied them together forever. She had understood that when she asked him to become a donor. He also had to think about it when he considered her request. He agreed to this sort of commitment, he agreed that by this ultimate step, he will forever remain a part of her own being.

And that is why she feels that the touch of those hands that saved her so many times, that held her through so many sufferings, now is not enough. Now it is something more. The moment when he agreed to become a father to her child, regardless of the result, he had united with her forever. That’s why embrace of a friend is not enough anymore. Today she lost something and no friend could understand that loss. It could be only understood by someone who lost as much – the other parent whose child was also taken away.

Slowly she decreases already small distance between them. With eyes still closed, one of her hands reaches his face. Her body replays those movements as if she is replaying an old record which accompanied her throughout her whole life imprinting on her brain more and more with every passing day. She remembers each detail of his face without even looking. She surrenders to an impulse she doesn’t wish or need to understand, to a need born in the deepest abyss of sadness and grief she feels herself falling into. She opens her eyes and looks straight into his. She stares desperately and with determination similar to the one that a drowning person has when looking at the lifeline. But she also stares with hope that in his eyes, she will find an exact reflection of her own feelings. It’s possible that those dark, tender eyes she sees are showing a bit different emotion – but there is not enough sense in her to reflect on such a nuance. He takes a deep breath, he wants to say something – but before those thoughts can form into any words, she closes the gap between them and kisses him. It is probably too fast. It is probably too hard. But there it is.

After a moment she breaks the kiss. Catching her breath, she rests her forehead on his. His hand that laid on her waist goes to her face but before he manages to pull back and look at her, she copies his movement and now – with both her hands closed around his face, she starts to kiss him again. This time slowly, tenderly, as if this sudden desperation from before vanished completely, as if it was entirely replaced by languishing, penetrating pain – quiet but deep, steadily consuming her existence. She feels that he’s kissing her back. For a few moments, she doesn’t even know how long, they are just standing there, in the middle of her living room, embraced, immersed in tender, yet firm caresses, which taste so surprisingly new for both of them. She doesn’t think – she only feels. And what she feels is that even though she’s breathless, by being so close to him, she can finally breathe again. She feels that she wants to be even closer. She presses her body to Mulder’s, hoping he will understand that she is ready for more than just kisses. And then, suddenly she feels a hit of cold and emptiness when he pulls back with no warning, breaking the kiss and moving his hands from her face to her arms.

“Scully…” he manages to whisper and takes a deep breath. His lips are bit swollen and eyes a little darker than usual.

“We can’t…” he starts again but doesn’t finish his sentence.

Very quickly she realizes what just happened. And even though her inner voice of reason that she can hear again tells her exactly the same that Mulder just did, she still feels how warm his kisses were, how she melted under his touch, how sadness and loneliness were washed away when she was close to him.

“Mulder… Please…” It sounds ridiculous, even in her own ears. Is it real that she is standing right in front of him, asking him to kiss her, to touch her, to love her? She knows she shouldn’t. She knows she will destroy everything if she will not stop immediately, is she will not calm herself down and hide her weakness under a veil of silence thick as embarrassment she begins to feel. They should act like that time when she was stung by a bee, when Mulder tried to kiss her – they should never talk about this again, they should pretend like nothing happened. But today she is not able to put on a calm and professional mask that just slipped off her face. She wants to be close to him, as she never did before.

“Please, Mulder… Please… I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she says and her voice is getting weaker with every word spoken and her eyes are falling down, lower and lower, until she’s staring at the floor. She’s afraid to look him in the eye. She knows that she’s a pathetic image to look at right now and if she meet his eyes, she will only see pity there. Long gone are the times when she had to hide her feelings under a mask of professionalism to not lose his respect. She is no longer afraid to be honest with him. She can allow herself to be scared, sad or weak in front of him – she knows that it will not change the way he looks at her. And yet now she feels that she took this one step too far in exposing her true emotions and this one step can cost her so much. That’s why she’s unable to lift her head and look at him.

Seconds of silence that falls after her last words prolong mercilessly. And when she finally feels that she will no longer stand this suspense anymore and she will run away, Mulder pulls her closer into a tight embrace.

“You will not be alone today. I’m not going anywhere. I will not leave you,” his voice is steady but quiet.

And just like that the tension is gone. She realizes that presence and support from a friend is all that she can count on today. Disappointment meets relief in the most bizarre combination making her ready to cry again and at the same time enabling her to take a deep breath and relax her muscles. She closes her arms around his waist and listens closely to the steady beating of his heart.

He doesn’t want to be with her the way she wants it. But he’s ready to be here in any other way. She just needs to accept that this must be enough.

“I’m sorry,” she says after a minute when she feels ready to pull back from him and stand on her own feet.

“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” he tells her and she knows that he really means it. His face is full of understanding, with no traces of pity that she was so afraid of.

“I think I will go and take a bath…” She starts shyly, wondering whether Mulder will keep his word and stay with her or will find this as a good opportunity to retreat away from this inconvenient situation.

“That’s a good idea. When you get back, we can watch some TV. Or talk. Or just… you know… sit. Whatever you need. You wanna coffee?”

A subtle smile appears on her face.

"Mulder, it’s almost 9pm…”

“Tea then,” he corrects immediately, smiles back and moves in the direction of her kitchen.

She watches him for a few more seconds. The memory of a kiss – of _him_ kissing her _back_ – doesn’t leave her mind. If he were to follow her actions, everything would have changed; everything would become even more complicated than it already was. So, she tries to convince herself, it’s probably better that at least he was able to be reasonable and keep some distance between them…

And yet she regrets.

And yet she still wants what he’s not willing to give her. Today she asked for love and instead was given friendship. Suddenly a thing she cherished more than anything else in the world became consolation prize and lost its beautiful charm. She feels empty. And with that feeling she takes her eyes off of him, turns away and goes to the bathroom.

 


	2. picture perfect

_[ii: picture perfect]_

His movements are driven by the force of habit rather than sheer will. While his mind is sorely focused on catching and tracing each sound coming from the bathroom, his hands unconditionally go through content of kitchen cabinets. From one of them he takes two cups. From another he grabs some tea – a green one for her and black one for himself. Then he puts the kettle on and finally sits at the table and lets his mind drift off.

None of the scenarios that he prepared in his head for this evening had predicted what happened here, just a few minutes ago. After work he came to Scully’s apartment. He never was an optimist, that’s why he didn’t wait for her with balloons and “Best Mommy in the world” T-shirt. He chose simpler and humbler option – he waited with hope. That’s right – _hope_. Lying on her couch and looking at clock hands lazily measuring each passing minute, he understood that the strongest of feelings that filled his heart was in fact hope. Of course, there was also fear, doubts, a bit of confusion – just like on that day when he left her apartment right after he agreed to take a part in all of this.

But still, most of it was hope. He wanted the procedure to work. For Scully in the first place. Because that was her dream. Because it was his fault that years before she was even able to realize that was what she really wanted, she has lost a chance to have it. That’s why he hoped that everything will work out. But… somewhere along the way it changed and it was no longer only about her.

He never wanted to be a father. Or rather he never even thought of becoming one and that’s why he didn’t want it. He had pretty bad experiences with fathers. The one he was raised to believe was his father and even more the one that probably was his real father, the two of them together were the worst possible examples of fatherhood. And maybe because of that, somewhere in the back of his head, he knew that due to genetics or upbringing he would turn out to be a terrible parent. Even when in his younger days he actually had any real relationship with women, he never came to a moment when it was expected from him to consider starting a family. He was not a father material. He knew that without trying. Because really, you don’t have to go to the seminary to know you don’t have what it takes to become a priest – the general reluctance to the institution of church is enough to get it. That’s why when Scully asked him for this unusual favor his first instinct was to decline. How did that thought even appear in her mind? Him as a father? Of course, nature of that fatherhood could restrict only to the short visit in an infertility clinic. He knew for sure that Scully would never demand from him anything that he was not ready or willing to give her. And yet, somewhere between the lines there was this mutual agreement that if he will say yes, he will become a father – not a donor. But still her decision didn’t make any sense to him. A woman like her would easily find a better father material for her longed-for child. Why, in a matter of such an importance, she agreed to take something worse when she could find something much better?

That night when she came to him, he couldn’t fall asleep. He wanted to help her, he wanted to fix all the ill that he caused, to give her the only thing that she ever asked of him. But he couldn’t stop to think how terrible father he will become for that child. He couldn’t imagine himself with a stroller, among diapers, on the way to the school, on little league game… He couldn’t see himself like that, yet the longer he thought about it, the better he had seen the child. Sometimes it was a boy. Other times – a girl. And all the details have started to fall into place and in the picture more and more often he also saw Scully. There was something painfully perfect in that picture. Something that scared him and at the same time enchanted him to no ends.

And that was when he understood.

Being _a_ father and being _the_ father of her child were two completely different things. Was it that because of this he was not able to imagine it before? Was it that he couldn’t see himself as a father, because no woman that he was with in the past had he seen as a mother? Was it possible that with a mother like Scully, he could become a good father? Was it a reason why she asked him in the first place? Because she felt that he will be a good father to their child, even though it was possible that for any other child in the world he would be the worst parent? Suddenly the picture in his mind changed. And God, he loved that picture just as much as he was afraid of it. He was there. First next to Scully and because of her, also next to the child. Next to the little girl. Next to the little boy.

He could have become a father. He could have become a dad. Scully could have become a mom and he a dad to their child. Normality that he had negated whole his life suddenly knocked on his door – as unexpected and yet welcomed as a warm breeze of spring in the middle of February. All he needed to do was to open up the doors. All he needed to do was to say _yes_.

So he did just that, but life decided to mock them both once again. Wanting, dreaming and hoping were not enough for a miracle to happen.

There will be no little boy. There will be no little girl. There will be no mom. And there will also be no dad.

Even though he had been thinking about it for only couple of days, when Scully came back to the apartment and he read from her face that the procedure had failed, he felt disappointed. He could only imagine what sort of feelings she had – she who dreamt about it for years. Just like him, she was not going crazy with her enthusiasm – she didn’t go buying baby clothes or redecorating guest bedroom into a nursery. But still, something about her has changed. Hope that she had repressed for years, has now finally surfaced, flared up with a fire that reflected in her eyes, in her smile, even in the way she moved. In those few days between procedure and finding its results, she was filled with that one thought and he had no heart to damp her ardor even though in this case he had to take the role of a skeptic. So when she lost her last hope was it a reason why she acted in such a sudden, unexpected way?

He’d lied if he’d say that he never imagined how it would be to kiss her. Few times he was even close to actually find that out. New Year’s Eve was a perfect excuse and when he kissed her in the middle of that hospital corridor, he felt… damn, he was sure as never before, that if he’d decided to change that kiss in something more than just New Year’s tradition, she’d let him do that. Still, he was too afraid to take that one more step forward. Today it turned out that to cross this invisible boundary that they demarcated for themselves, they had needed something more – feelings much more rapid and extreme that would push them into an unknown direction with the force stronger than ever before. Funny thing though… He always assumed that he will actually be the one to act on those emotions and she will, at most, reciprocate the gesture. It happened the other way around.

Kissing her was something completely wrong, yet at the same time something entirely right. Each nerve in his body screamed for more. He wanted to kiss her like that to no end. He wanted to do more than just kiss her. On the other hand common sense ordered him to retreat. Right away. Before it will be too late. Everything about those kisses was right – everything besides the reason why it happened. If he were about to kiss her, it should be because they both wanted it, wanted this sort of intimacy as another step on a bumpy road of their relationship. Not because it was a good way to divert attention from the sadness, to distract the pain and loneliness.

With firm, yet unwilling gesture he broke the closeness between them. But when he heard her quiet plea, asking him not to do that, to not leave her alone, there was no other thing that he wanted more than just to pull her tightly and kiss senselessly, until they both melt down in those kisses and forget that something besides them has ever existed in this world.

She was embarrassed, he knows that. But he also knows that it is nothing in comparison to the embarrassment she would have felt in the morning, if anything more would’ve happened between them. If only there was another reason for her to want him. Not because she needed to forget and because she decided to shut her mind by opening her body. If only he was sure that she really wanted it and not just needed it – he wouldn’t have spare a second thought on analyzing any consequences. He really wanted to believe that her instincts were right, but even though for all his life he never really needed any hard proofs to believe in something, this time stake was too high to take a leap of faith and hope for the best. If there was anything to be learned from this evening, it was that hope can really screw you over…

The only thing he could have done was to promise her he won’t leave her alone. And by that also promise himself that he will not use her moment of weakness. For both of their sakes.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that English is not my first language so sorry if you've noticed any errors and mistakes.


End file.
